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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29054181">Into the Rose Garden</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dislegomena/pseuds/dislegomena'>dislegomena</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Endlong into Midnight [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2006-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2006-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:16:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,216</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29054181</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dislegomena/pseuds/dislegomena</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>But to what purpose / Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves / I do not know.</i> The first time it happens, she knows it’s wrong, but she kisses him anyway.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Endlong into Midnight [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131533</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Into the Rose Garden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written October 7, 2006.<br/>Originally posted at ff.net November 3, 2006.<br/>Posted at AO3 January 28, 2021.</p>
<p><b>Note</b>: While I'm posting this fic here for archive purposes, I am no longer a member of Harry Potter fandom and neither support nor condone J.K. Rowling's hateful and harmful transphobic statements. Trans women are women. Trans men are men.</p>
<p>Canon-compliant through HBP. Set a few months after "Consign to Thee, and Come to Dust."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time it happens, she knows it's wrong.</p>
<p>Neither of them mean for it to happen, really, but it does anyway. On a cool April night,
they are at his flat, planning and strategizing, and she breaks under the stress, crying into his
shirt. He kisses her forehead, then her cheek, then her lips -</p>
<p>Her lover is two months gone and his loss is still measured in weeks. They shouldn't be
doing this, she thinks, not now, not so soon . . . but he <i>understands</i> what it's like to have the hole
in the bottom of yourself where someone else used to be. He understands the emptiness and the
loneliness. He's the only one who understands the deep and inconsolable grief. Others are
sympathetic, certainly - Molly Weasley has been wonderful - but he is the only one who knows
what it's like.</p>
<p>So they fall together, struggling for a mutual release and a moment of peace. Afterward,
apologizing profusely, she lets herself out of his flat and goes home, feeling old and sad. She
hunches herself into a ball on her bed and watches the dawn in, agonizingly hollow and unfilled.</p>
<p>She visits Ron's grave the next afternoon, sniffling and asking him to forgive her for her
trespasses. He of course is beyond making answer, and feeling stupid and ashamed, she goes
back to her business. The world does not stop just because her life has tilted drastically on its
axis; there are still battles to plan, a war to be fought and a dictator to defeat.</p>
<p>She goes back to his flat that evening, another strategy meeting, and aside from his rather
sheepish smile as he opens the door, nothing is said of the previous night. They read field reports
on Death Eater movements, pretending they're not both desperately on edge, and she is gloomily
amused by the way their movements skirt each other, careful not to touch. Words stretch
unspoken between them, the conversation they need to be having, and finally around midnight
the tension in the room drives her to put her work aside. She stands, saying, "I've got to go."</p>
<p>He half-turns from his seat at the desk. "All right. But -"</p>
<p>"But?" she says, stuffing her stack of parchment into her bag.</p>
<p>He runs a hand through his hair and stares at the rug. "Come back."</p>
<p>"Come -" She rubs her eyes. "We shouldn't be doing this."</p>
<p>"I know." He doesn't look up from the floor, but she can still see the misery and
aloneness on his face. The hollow place inside her echoes.</p>
<p>She goes to him.</p><hr/>
<p>Inevitably, she ends up in his bed over and over during the next months. Later she remembers
this part of her life as indistinct and surreal, divorced from reality. Some part of her understands
that this is not something she would do under any other circumstances. Other, emptier parts of
her ache to be filled, and so she goes back.</p>
<p>And yet they are still as separate and isolated as they were before April. He is
withdrawing into himself, pulling away from her and from his duties to the Order. Increasingly
she finds herself covering for him, making reports and going on raids. When she does, the looks
the other Order members give her have shifted from infuriatingly knowing to sympathetic and
worried.</p>
<p>She worries as well. It's not right, any of it. <i>This is not how my life was supposed to go</i>,
she finds herself thinking at times. Voldemort was never supposed to rise again, Dumbledore
wasn't supposed to die, her friends weren't supposed to be killed one by one, she wasn't
supposed to end up sleeping with someone just so she wouldn't feel alone. <i>This is not my life</i>, she
thinks, and she stares unhappily at the drawn face in the mirror.</p><hr/>
<p>Summer burns by in a haze of fights, meetings, and strange disconnected sex. He doesn't touch
her any more than he has to, doesn't say more than he needs to. She understands; this, whatever it
is they are doing, is numbing the pain, but it's numbing everything else along with it.</p>
<p>Still, it continues. She has all but moved into his flat, all but taken over for him when it
comes to the running of the Order. This is doomed - both of them know it - but they cling to it as
if to a life preserver.</p>
<p>"We don't talk," she says one night, when they are lying together, ostensibly cuddling but
really just marking time until falling asleep. "We never talk anymore."</p>
<p>"There's nothing to say."</p>
<p>She looks over at him. He stares at the ceiling, avoiding her gaze. "What's happened to
us?" she asks plaintively.</p>
<p>"This is what it is to grow up, Hermione," he says, and then he rolls over, away from her.</p><hr/>
<p>Together, they drift through the end of summer and into autumn in this state of suspended
animation. Her mother has taken to calling her weekly, aware that something is wrong with her
daughter but unable to understand what it is. She issues regular denials that anything's wrong,
trying to reassure her mother as best she can.</p>
<p>She finally breaks again on a breezy October night, full moon hanging in the sky, one of
the few nights she spends at her own flat. She spends an hour crying into her former lover's
pillow, weeping out her grief and desperation. Everything is all wrong; nothing is right; and she
can't keep living like this. The holes inside her are deepening, widening to the point where she
feels as if she's more air than substance.</p>
<p>The next morning, she goes to his London flat. The shadows under his eyes when he
greets her speak of a hard night. She bites her lip in nervous anticipation of what she's going to
say to him.</p>
<p>"We can't keep doing this," she says as soon as he closes the door behind her. "It has to
stop. We have to stop."</p>
<p>He looks at her passively and then rubs his forehead. "I know."</p>
<p>"I think -" she starts, and then hesitates, rephrases. "I'm going to go away for a while. A
few months, maybe. My parents have asked me to go on an overseas trip with them. And then
maybe when I come back things can be - all right again. But they're all wrong right now. I've got
to go."</p>
<p>She waits for him to say something. He stares at the floor. "All right," he says after a few
minutes.</p>
<p>"I'm sorry," she offers.</p>
<p>"Don't be. It wasn't your fault."</p>
<p>"It could have been - I could have handled this better."</p>
<p>"Well, all right," he says, and she sees a tugging at the corners of his mouth. "It could
have been that. But I was in this just as much as you. I could have -" He falls silent. "No, I'm the
one who's sorry, Hermione. I've made you miserable these past few months. I've got enough
perspective left to see that. I suppose . . . I suppose I thought you were what I needed. But it turns
out you were only what I wanted."</p>
<p>She blushes and looks away.</p>
<p>"Go your ways, Hermione," he says. "Put yourself right. It'll all be here when you get
back."</p>
<p>She leaves his flat and feels that finally, she is starting to heal.</p>
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